PC Hardware ePresentation

Optical Drive, RAM, Video Card, and Sound Card

PC Hardware ePresentation

Optical Drive, RAM, Video Card, and Sound Card

Optical Drive

An optical drive is a disk drive that uses lasers to retrieve and/or store data on an optical disk which include CD, DVD, or BD. Optical drives are usually as big as a thick soft cover book and fit inside the computer case where it connects to the motherboard of the computer through a port/cable, as well as a connection to the power supply. The more formats an optical drive plays the better with newer disk drives that read blu-ray disks rather than only older optical disks such as CDs. Most blu-ray players are looked at the speed which they can handle optical disk media with speeds going up to 50x. A high end model includes the blu-ray burner-LG BH16NS40 which costs 120 dollars and can go up to speeds of 16x for BD and DVD-R or 48x for CD-R. An average model would be the 95 dollar blu-ray burner LG UH12NS30 which offers 12x BD speeds and DVD speeds of 16x and Cd speeds of 40x. A budget consious model would be the blu-ray combo drive which does not come with a blu-ray burner however has playback speeds of 12x for BD and recording speeds of 16x for DVD and 48x for CD.

RAM

RAM, also known as Random Access Memory, is a type of memory within a computer which can be accessed randomly without interfering with other bytes of memory within the computer. RAM is read and write memory, allowing a user to code while ROM on the other hand is read-only memory, making it read only.

The two most common types of RAM include DRAM, being the more common and slower type, and SRAM, being the faster type and more expensive type. DRAM supports access times of 60 seconds as it must be refreshed 1000x a second, while SRAM does not need to allowing it to support access times of just 10 seconds.

Average RAM models usually come build in with the motherboard of a computer and are usually the DRAM type. A budget-conscious model when updating one's computer would be the DIMM 240-pin - DDR2 model which only contains 1gb memory and DRAM memory, ranging from 7 to 32 dollars. A high-end model would be the SODIMM 204-pin- DDR3 which contains 8gb memory and SRAM while it ranges from 78 to 107 dollars.

Video Card

Video cards are what essentially displays the pictures or videos on our computer. These pictures contain pixels of almost 1million at a regular resolution, each pixel needs to be arranged probably to form an image, which is basically what the video card does.

Video cards that have high memory and FPS or frames per second rate which measures how many complete images the card can display per second.

An average video card would be built into the computer system's motherboard and come with it. A budget-conscious model would be the Zotac GeForce GT 630 Synergy Edition 4GB DDR3 PCI-E Video Card at 90 dollars with a FPS average of around 50. A high end model would be the ZOTAC GeForce GTX 780 Ti 3GB DDR5 PCI-E Video Card with a FPS average of 100 at 730 dollars.

Sound Card

Sound cards allow the computer to send audio information to audio mechanisms or devices such as headphones or speakers.

A average sound card is Sound Blaster Live! Value Card at 60 dollars. A high-end model would be UAD-2 SOLO PCIe DSP card at 300 dollars. A budget-conscious model would be the Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Audio Sound Card at 65 dollars.